


Relic

by thisaestus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-28
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-15 04:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisaestus/pseuds/thisaestus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What really happened when Moody was killed during the Battle of the Seven Potters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relic

**Author's Note:**

> Written for snapelike during the 2012 Reversathon fest.

The distance between the cold, stone floor and the opening of the trunk is approximately 3.04 meters. He knows because he prepared the seventh compartment himself. The trunk had been obtained by his grandfather somewhere in China or Cambodia, he can never remember which, and given to him as a gift by his parents when he left Hogwarts. They’d meant it to be a piece that could be passed down in the family, but that sort of thing was a long way off, and the idea of a portable secret hiding place appealed to him. It’d taken nearly a year of research on wizarding space to figure out the arithmancy and expanding charms, and not a few pints with old Milredge, who’d joined the Department of Mysteries, to try to work out how to get it to stick to something portable.

By the time it was all sorted, he’d never gotten around to making it a comfortable hideout in the case of a siege. It proved its usefulness instead as a temporary holding cell for a handful of dark wizards and other criminals until they could be transported to Azkaban. He curses himself now, huddled in a corner and freezing. Some fairy lights would not have gone amiss, and why had he never thought to put in a camp bed?

\----------------------------

The first thing he feels when he is released from the trunk is fear. He slips into consciousness briefly enough to panic, terrified though he hears Albus’s voice trying to soothe him. For the first time in his life he is weak, too weak to protest when he is transported to the hospital wing and force fed-potions. He trembles upon awakening, and it is several days before they trust him with a wand.

When he is lucid for more than a moment, that’s when the humiliation comes, the shame of being a seasoned, decorated Auror caught unawares while crouching over his trunk, keys right there in his palm for taking. After a struggle, and a body bind, he’d been shoved into the dark opening. A hastily cast cushioning charm had spared his bones, perhaps, but not the bruising impact. He howls at his captors in the hospital wing, demanding the answers to a string of increasingly more difficult questions to verify the identities of those trying to approach him with wands, potions. Eventually, Albus takes over his care, as he is the only one who can answer correctly every time.

Then there is the obsession. He recounts what he remembers for Albus, drills him for hours about his impersonation, stays immersed in his Pensieve for days poring over “Professor Moody’s” year at Hogwarts and their combined memories of the Crouch Jr. trial. He interrogates the Crouch house elf repeatedly, although their sessions are usually derailed by her wailing and his growing frustration, until Albus gently informs him that she will no longer be available for questioning. Somehow, the one detail that sticks out like a reed in water is Crouch transfiguring his father’s body into a bone and burying it. He can’t get the thought out of his mind, seeking out texts and theories until he can transfigure a dozen objects into his face, then body, and back again.

\----------------------------

Back at the Ministry there are far too many people and he is jumpier than ever. He didn’t expect a shrine, exactly, but he is irritated to find the desk from which he’s plotted the downfalls of any number of criminals being occupied as a place of honor. After an ugly little scene that ends in Lex Mallows being granted a two-week vacation and stalking off with his belongings shrunk into a handy little box, he reclaims ownership of the spot where he's spent thousands of hours of his life. A few scouring charms and his desk is his again, right in the cozy little corner that fits his back so snugly and from which he can see almost half of the Auror department.

He is informed that it is against Ministry policy to allow employees to erect personal wards in Ministry office space, in particular wards that zap those foolish enough to cross them. He is told there are no exceptions, no matter the length and quality of an employee’s service—especially if they are not technically currently employed by the Ministry. It’s a load of codswallop is what it is, since he’s had wards around his desk for more years than this lot’s been out of nappies, and given the Ministry an eye and a leg to boot, but he dismantles them with only minor grumbling. His task is more important than haggling with these petty bureaucrats.

He hears the mutterings from the Aurors in their mid-career, most of whom know enough to respect and fear him, but who resent his intrusion back into his old stomping grounds, where they've now grown comfortable trying to carve out their own glory. The new recruits are actually worse, snickering openly about one too many Stunners to the head and talking about him as a liability. They're mostly a wash, but his favorite quickly become young Nymphadora Tonks, who is clumsy enough that he always hears her approaches, and who always has a bright smile (many different ones) no matter how he snarls. There is also a tall, dark-skinned wizard who is quiet and steady and smart and respectful.

When a shimmering phoenix appears late one night and Albus’s voice murmurs it is time, he knows that they are the two he wants.

\----------------------------

The opportunity to test Tonks and Shacklebolt in action comes much more quickly than any of them could have guessed. Harry Potter is being threatened with expulsion for the use of underage magic, and no one can tell if the charge is legitimate or not. Owls fly back and forth since only a few of them know how to communicate by Patronus, exposing the gaps in what they’ll need to teach the new members of the order. He is absurdly anxious about the prospect of meeting Harry Potter , as the lad had apparently been close to his imposter the year before. In the time between owls, he digs out an old group photograph that includes the boy’s parents, then decides it would be better to wait.

Tonks having grown up with a Muggleborn father means she is able to provide valuable assistance and information during their reconnaissance, and she glows with pride. But he notices Shacklebolt again and again, radiating with a remarkable presence and steadiness. When Potter is safely deposited at Black’s place, he finds himself wishing he could have a pint with the man, immediately scraps the idea. They are members of an underground society, will in all likelihood be comrades in a war. It will not do to fraternize too closely, to develop any sort of familiarity that could be exploited.

\----------------------------

Shacklebolt quickly proves his usefulness when he manages to get himself appointed head of the search for Sirius Black. He seems to delight in delivering serious and sober reports of sightings in new and more exotic locales and popping over to Grimmauld Place the same night for dinner. As Shacklebolt recounts a report from that very day, Alastor surprises himself and everyone around the table with a laugh that is more like a loud bark. As they rise at the end of the meeting, he stumps heavily to the door and Disapparates, but not before muttering a gruff, “Keep up the good work, lad.”

And keep it up he does. Shacklebolt’s reputation as a solid, neutral Auror means he is attached to a Hogwarts visit to finally bring down Harry Potter in the face of irrefutable evidence of his treachery. Only his quick thinking and skill with wandless, wordless magic is the difference between their success and failure.

They suffer a setback when Scrimgeour sends him to the Muggle Prime Minister’s office as a secretary, but that one, with the face and eyes of a lion, has always been too shrewd at sniffing out potential threats to his power.

\----------------------------

Dumbledore’s death marks the real tipping point of the war. It is also a crushing blow to the Order, and astonishing how much of the planning and knowledge Albus was actually responsible for. In the absence of a plan of succession and no figurehead, he finds himself communicating often with Shacklebolt, although he is Kingsley more often than not, now.

The problem of how to protect Potter has prompted more than one late night planning session. The difficulty is that that rat bastard Snape knows way too much about their original plans and they’re not sure how much else he can guess. The one thing Alastor has determined is the strange appeal of Kingsley’s throat as it swallows Firewhiskey, which poses a new set of problems all their own.

\----------------------------

The plan to turn Potter’s friends into Polyjuiced replicas of him will either be a disaster or worthy of an Order of Merlin. It is the sort of sheer brilliance and insanity that only someone as depraved as Mundungus Fletcher, with all his schemes and conniving, could twist together. When he’d first brought up the idea of using Mundungus as the sixth Potter, Kingsley’d warned him against it. When it became apparent he was serious, various Weasleys were enlisted to try to sway him. But the cold truth is that no matter how little they can trust him, there is no one else they can trust more. Mundungus is too scared of returning to Azkaban and already bound to secrecy by the vows he’d taken to the Order to fail in something as simple as a broom ride.

As he watches a roomful of people exclaim over the new sensations of being shorter, more myopic, he feels hopeful that by the time the Polyjuice wears off, they’ll all be tucking into seconds or even pudding around Molly Weasley’s famous table.

But things immediately go terribly, horribly wrong. The sky is full of brightly colored curses and white Death Eater masks, and no matter how successful he has been at tracking the bastards down over the years, he still feels a thrill of fear uncurl in his chest and he is heady with adrenaline. And it turns out Kingsley is right about Mundungus, after all, but he ends up being the right choice anyway. Because he hears Mundungus yell “Oh, shit!” and his magical eye turns in time to watch him disappear. As he is vowing all the ways he’ll make the sniveling cowardly bastard pay when they find him, he sees the signature, electric green of the Killing Curse headed right at the spot where Mundungus had been, which gives him a split second in which to swerve his broom a fraction.

The Killing Curse lands straight and true on the stump of his artificial leg, knocking him right off his broom with a force that reverberates through his body. He is astonished to feel himself falling, but the shock at being alive (does this mean he’s the second person to survive the Killing Curse?) wears off quickly when he realizes how high up he is and how quickly the ground is approaching. He panics briefly when he can’t contort himself enough to reach the spare wand in his boot, and a summoning spell is no use in a situation like this. He begins internally chanting a litany of cushioning charms and impediment spells, praying something will work and he won’t have escaped a killing curse only to be killed by gravity. His speed slows down but he is still falling fast. Somewhere between the spell for creating a cushion of air underneath hospital patients and an incantation cast on falling Quidditch players, he hits.

It is worse than the Killing Curse, the way his breath is knocked out of him on impact. As he lies on his back, lungs incapable of contracting and expanding, a Pensieve memory of watching Pomfrey chuckling as she tells his imposter about that fop Lockheart turning Harry Potter’s bones into rubber pops into his head. Everything hurts. Rubber bones would have been a blessing. His lungs are burning, and finally he gasps air back into them. He cracks open his eye and sees the night clouds dancing with the light of curses above him.

Wincing, he rolls himself to a seated position. Everything seems to be functioning, although maybe it’s just the adrenaline, and at the very least he’ll feel like shite for at least a week. He reaches a trembling hand into his boot, and miracle of miracles, withdraws a perfectly intact wand. And maybe it is the adrenaline, or maybe he really did earn all that crap about being a legend, because he moves quickly into action, instinct taking over.

He wonders briefly if maybe things aren’t completely bollixed after all, because he has landed in a field, and unless that fall knocked him blind, there is a scarecrow drooping on a pole just a few meters away. It is already the right shape, and so it is the work of less than a moment for the scarecrow to become a replica of his body. The wooden pole is easily Transfigured into his false leg and attached. He glances at the sky, where there are no longer any flashes of light, and makes his choice.

With a sense of loss and regret, he removes his magical eye and inserts it into the empty eye socket of the scarecrow Alastor lying broken on the ground. This should be the detail that will convince them that the Killing Curse made its mark, and with any luck they won’t examine it too closely. If it is the Order who returns for him, he will find his way back to them somehow and explain everything. If it is the Death Eaters who come to claim their trophy, he will be safe and secure. He reaches for the portkey stuck snug under his shirt with a fastening charm and activates it, whirling quickly away.

\-------------------------

From the outside, the safe house would look like a rotting old weathered fishing shack to the Muggles in this seaside town. That is the second layer of protection woven into its wards. Far more important is that it is a relic of the first Order of the Phoenix, and the only person he has ever told its secret to was Albus. As such, he is inviolable, undetectable, and therefore invincible in this place.

The first week is miserable. The adrenaline wears off quickly after he lands in the safe house, and his bones are too damned old to be doing this again. He’s mostly skilled at being an Auror, not at Mediwizardry, but he heals his aches the best he can. He smashes a vial of healing potion when he sees Snape’s spidery writing on its label, then tries to convince himself it was probably poisoned anyway once he realizes that there are no more. He eats Muggle tinned beans and tuna fish from the stock he brought here last November, just in case. The Ministry has no record of this wand, obtained by a great great uncle in Persia, of this he is certain. He still uses it sparingly.

He stares at the wood paneled wall from his perch on the old plaid sofa and wonders what happened to the others. He feels some measure of guilt that he has this safe house, that he never instructed the others to find a safe location and how to make illegal portkeys. He tamps down on that particular line of thinking quickly. There was clearly a traitor among them who had tipped off the Death Eaters. He sighs, wishes he could talk the matter over with Kingsley over a glass of Firewhiskey like they’d done all summer. The wards block out the sound of the waves crashing below. He walks over to the window, peers out into the night.

\----------------------------

A basic part of Auror training is learning to blend in with Muggles. There is even a special module called “How to Survive Undercover in the Muggle World” whose training and scoring he’d overseen several times. But the absolute best advice came unintentionally from Albus, who’d chuckled over tea recounting how he’d found that pillock Slughorn imitating furniture and eating his way through Muggle pantries.

It is disturbingly easy to slip out of the protective wards at night undetected after a day of surveillance to spot which holiday cottages were vacant. There is no room for bothersome middle class whinging about Muggle rights. They are oblivious to his pilfering, and this is wartime. There is a pebble in the garden. He hurls it toward the sea.

\----------------------------

In the moments before the wards are breached, Alastor's skin begins to prickle. It is not precisely a crawl, but a sort of tingly creeping sensation—not exactly hostile, but neither is it welcome. His heart begins pounding, because the only person who should be able to find him is dead, bringing the hopes of half the wizarding world with him.

There is enough time that he is able to disillusion himself against the wall behind the door. The knob twists silently and then relents, and his heart begins beating more quickly. Whoever is there is a strong witch or wizard to get through the wards so quietly and quickly. He regrets for the thousandth time the loss of his magical eye and its usefulness in situations like this.

Then someone who looks like Kingsley peers silently into the room. While part of him is in shock, the part of him that has been trained to respond instantly to any threat has the intruder in a full body bind on the floor in less than three seconds. He levitates the person onto the couch and pries the wand from his hand. It looks exactly like he remembers Kingsley’s, but he is no Ollivander, and Polyjuice is easy enough to come by.

He thinks furiously, decides to get it over with. He has no veritaserum, but he does have two wands now. Ropes fly out and wrap tightly around the invader’s torso and legs, pinning his arms against his sides. A quick Finite, and the man is beaming, exclaiming that he’s alive.

Clearly a tactic to play at his emotions, but he’s an old hand at this.

“Who are you?” he snarls in the man’s face. Taken aback, the man replies that he’s Kingsley, of course.

Ah, so that’s how he wants to play it. He begins interrogating him, asking outlandish questions even Dumbledore probably wouldn’t have been able to answer, but after his twelfth impossible question is answered, he is forced to admit that the man might possibly be Kingsley, and releases him from the ropes. He is not ready to give him his wand back though.

“How did you find this place?” he demands angrily.

Kingsley explains that Dumbledore had told him of its existence before he’d died and he’d come to scout it out for the Order. It is a point of pride to Alastor that the wards were barely noticeable when he crossed them.

They decide that maybe for now it’s best if no one knows he’s survived. The rest of the Order’d made it safely to the Burrow, but the Weasley boy’s wedding had been crashed by Death Eaters a few days later. Harry and his two friends had disappeared, and Kingsley is back at the Prime Minister’s office. Alastor’s death has created not quite a martyr, but something at least to avenge.

They agree that Kingsley will check in at least once a fortnight. Flooing is out of the question, as are owls. But maybe a patronus. . . He hands him back his wand, and Kingsley grins broadly, sweeps his arm wide, and a beautiful silver lynx races happily around the room. He disappears, and Alastor sinks onto the plaid couch, pours himself a small glass of mead, a bottle of which was there when he arrived.

It’s not the same without firewhiskey, but maybe Kingsley will bring some when he returns.


End file.
